


Photograph

by DarkHeartInTheSky



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Post Episode s13e01, Title Subject to Change
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-14
Updated: 2017-10-14
Packaged: 2019-01-17 01:26:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12354570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarkHeartInTheSky/pseuds/DarkHeartInTheSky
Summary: Post Episode S13e01 "Lost and Found"Jack asks about Castiel.





	Photograph

Sam told him they were going home. They traveled in a black car. It was giant, made of metal, and very slow. He sat on a seat in the back. It was very quiet. But also very loud. The car made a lot of noise—a lot of noise—but Sam and Dean did not talk often. When they did, it was whispers in words he did not understand.

Jack looked out the window. The sky was beautiful—a bright, happy blue. Creatures Sam called birds were in the sky. They stopped for gasoline a few times.

“You want anything to eat?” Sam asked him.

“I like nougat,” Jack said, grinning, remembering the sweetness Clark had showed him.

Sam’s mouth turned to a thin line. “I’ll get you some.”

Sam gave him several different types of candies. Ones with nougat, but also several others. Chocolate, peanut butter, almonds, gummies. He did not like the gummies. They stuck to his teeth and made his tongue hurt. Sam took those and ate them, offering them to Dean, but Dean declined, and then he angrily stared at Jack in the mirror. Jack returned Dean’s gaze, smiling around a bite of candy, but Dean did not smile.

It was night time when they arrived home. Sam called it a bunker. It was underground. It felt safe. Jack followed Sam down the stairs.

“Be careful,” Sam said, leading slowly and carefully. “These stairs are concrete. If you fall, it’ll hurt.”

“Wow,” Jack said, looking around. The ceilings were high. There were books everywhere. Jack walked up to the bookshelf, and turned his head to read the titles on the spine.

“You can read?” Dean asked. It was the first time Dean had spoken to him directly.

“My—”

“Mother taught you.” Dean smacked his lips. “Of course.” He walked away. Jack watched until he was out of sight.

“Do you need to sleep?” Sam asked.

“Sleep?”

“Yeah. You have to eat, so I’m guessing you have to sleep too. You tired?”

“Tired?”

“Is it hard to concentrate? Keep your eyes open?”

Jack thought about it. The way Sam described it, he supposed he was tired. “What is sleep?”

“You close your eyes. . . and well. You relax and you’ll be unconscious for a little bit. Not awake. But when you do wake up you’ll feel better.”

“I see,” Jack said, frowning. Mother slept. She would speak to him as she lay in bed, waiting for sleep to take her. Tell him stories, but mostly she talked about Castiel.

“Um. Why don’t you look around? New place. It might be a little scary. But you’re safe here. Nothing can hurt you here.”

Jack couldn’t explain it, but something was calling to him. He followed the call to a small hallway filled with many doors. He passed by them, one by one, and the calling grew louder. It wasn’t like earlier—what Sam called ‘angel radio.’ It didn’t hurt. It felt nice. Warm.

Jack stopped in front of a door. Vibrations filled his bones. Jack reached out and touched the doorknob. It was warm. He turned it. He opened the door slowly—

And it slammed shut, so suddenly and violently, that Jack jumped back. There was a large hand right in the center. Jack turned. Dean was right there, keeping the door closed, still looking angry.

“You don’t go in there,” he said. “Stay the hell away from here.”

“What’s in there?” Jack asked.

“None of your business.” Dean reached up to the threshold of the door and pulled down a key. He put it in the keyhole of the door and turned it. The tumblers clicked. Dean put the key in his pocket.

“Sam said I needed to sleep.”

“Well you’ll have to find somewhere else to sleep. Sleep in the garage. The bathtub. Hell, sleep in the furnace for all I care. But you stay away from here.”

Dean turned around and walked away, disappearing into another door, slamming it shut. Jack looked back at the door. He turned the doorknob. It didn’t move.

Sam walked towards him. “I heard screaming. Is everything okay?”

“I don’t know.”

“What happened?”

Jack tried the doorknob again. “What’s in here?”

Sam swallowed. “Why do you want to know?”

“Dean says I can’t go in here.”

Sam sighed. He scratched the back of his head. “Um. That’s—that’s Cas’s room.”

“Oh,” Jack said.

Sam swallowed again. “Here. Move please. You can see it.”

“Dean says I can’t.”

“This’ll be our little secret, then.”

Sam reached for the doorknob with one hand. He moved it up and down very fast—with his other hand, he pressed again the door, moving it up and down. The door popped open. “These locks are over fifty years old. They don’t hold very well.”

Sam pushed the door open wide. He cleared his throat and put his arm out straight.

“Well, uh. Go ahead. Check it out.”

Jack peered inside and stepped in. Sam followed and closed the door.

The room was simple. There was a bed, neatly made, with the sheets even tucked underneath the mattress, and a desk that had nothing on it.

But Jack could feel the warmth inhabited within. It was in the walls, the floor. Jack touched the nightstand, tracing his fingers along the wood.

He sat on the bed. The springs squeaked under his weight. Sam sat down on the desk chair. Jack moved up slightly, and then sat back down, and the springs squeaked again. He bounced on the bed, lightly, the squeaking filling the room, until Sam put a hand on his knee.

“Jack,” he said.

“Did my father sleep here?”

Sam’s face grew paler. “No. No. Cas does—didn’t. He didn’t need to sleep. Uh, not usually. Not unless he was hurt.”

The idea of Castiel ever being hurt made Jack sad. He frowned curiously and picked at a piece of thread. “Can you tell me about my father?”

Sam’s voice raised in pitch, laced with the same kind of anger Dean’s had, “He’s not—” and then Sam stopped, swallowed, and exhaled. Quieter, he said, “Don’t let Dean hear you talk like that, okay?”

“Talk like what?”

“You gotta stop calling Cas your father, okay?”

Jack’s frown deepened. “But he is my father.”

Sam shook his head sadly. “He’s not. Your dad is named Lucifer, and he’s a very bad guy, and we have to protect you from him.”  


Jack shook his head. He stood up, the springs squeaking again. “You’re wrong. Castiel _is_ my father. My mother told me. Castiel protected us. He made the bad woman burn.” Jack could see it still, in his mind. The bad woman hurt his mother. And Castiel burned her.

“I remember,” Sam said sadly. His eyes were shining.

“And Castiel spoke to me,” Jack continued. “All the time.”

Sam was silent. He looked at Jack, eyes watering, sclera red. His jaw trembled. “He—he talked to you?”

Jack nodded. “He said he would protect me. That he would look after my mother. And he told me about you. And Dean. He said you two were great men.”

“Well, he was wrong.”

Jack was silent. Sam sniffed and rubbed his jaw with his face. He sniffed again. He didn’t seem to be able to control it.

Jack sat back down and stared at Sam. Watched him. Sam knelt forward over his knees.

“Your eyes are leaking,” Jack said.

“Yeah,” Sam said, licking his lips as he sat straight up.

“Tell me about him, Sam. Please.”

“He was. . . one of the best friends I ever had. Um. He was strong. And brave.”

“And kind,” Jack added. Castiel made his mother smile.

“Yeah. Really kind.”

Jack looked down at his fingernails.

“Why doesn’t Dean like me?”

“Don’t worry about Dean. I’ll handle him.”

“He scares me.”

Sam huffed. “He does that to everybody. Dean’s. . . Dean’s upset. We’re all very upset. And people get upset in different ways.”

“Are you upset?”

Sam looked away. He sighed and stood up. “You should get some sleep.”

“But Dean says I can’t stay—”

“Don’t,” Sam snapped. He bit his lip and curled his fingers into a fist. “I’ll handle Dean,” Sam whispered. He took another step.

“Wait.”

Sam stopped right in front of the door.

“What—what did he look like?”

Jack did not get to see his father. There had been a white sheet tied over him, and Dean had hovered so protectively over the body, almost like an animal.

Sam turned around. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a small, brown thing. Jack could smell that it was made of cow hide. He opened it up and looked at something inside. He pulled something out, hands shaking the entire time. He passed it to Jack.

Jack recognized Dean right away. He was standing in front of the black car, arm over the shoulders of another man, just as tall, with dark hair and blue eyes. Beautiful, blue eyes. The other man was looking at Dean. Jack pointed to him.

“Is that him?”

Sam sat down beside Jack on the bed. “Yeah.” Sam sounded. . . tired, Jack decided. “That’s Cas.”

Jack stared at his father. Castiel was smiling slightly at Dean.

“What is this?” Jack asked, tracing a finger slowly over Castiel.

“It’s a picture.”

“A pic-ture,” Jack said slowly. He turned it over. It was blank on the other side. He looked at Castiel again. This was his father. His father who saved him from the bad woman, who looked after his mother and made her comfortable, was her friend.

The father he never got to meet.

Jack’s eyes began to itch. He touched them. There was water on his fingers.

Sam looked at him sadly. “Why don’t you keep that?”

Jack didn’t know why, but he held the picture close to his heart. It felt right.

“Why are my eyes leaking?”

“It’s okay to cry,” Sam said. He sniffed again. “Nothing’s wrong with it.” Sam stood up. “Okay. I think it’s time for bed. If you need me, I’ll be right across from you. When you open this door, I’ll be right at the door you see.” Sam opened the door, and pointed the one he was talking about. “Okay?”

“Okay,” Jack said. It was getting harder to speak. His throat felt like it was smaller than it had been before.

“Good night, Jack.”

“Good night. Sam.”

Sam left and closed the door behind him. Jack stared at the picture again. Dean looked so happy in the picture. Dean only looked angry now.

He couldn’t keep his fingers off Castiel though. Over and over he traced the image of his father, his protector.

His eyes kept leaking. His hands started to shake.

“Father,” he said to the empty room. He looked around. The room was imbued with his father’s energy. His father had probably even sat on this very same bed.

But suddenly, that wasn’t enough. Jack needed to see him. Speak with him. His father would understand. Dean was angry with him, and Sam didn’t believe him, didn’t believe that Castiel was actually his father. And Jack was terrified because his mother told him the world was a scary, dangerous place that would be mean to him, and she was right. And he didn’t have his father. Just two, strange men who kept staring at him oddly.

Jack swallowed. He tasted something strange on his lips. It wasn’t sweet like the nougat. It wasn’t sweet at all.

“Father. . . I wish you were here.”


End file.
